Stories

A Good Career

Hi, I am 47 years old and am self-diagnosed as an aspie. After years of job hopping due to inability to get along well with co-workers and supervisors, I have finally found my ideal career! I am posting this in hopes of helping someone else who is searching for some peace in the job market. I am a medical transcriptionist who works from home, and this career has been a godsend. I never went to college (regular school was too much of a nightmare), but have learned clerical skills at on the job training at all of my various jobs. I have good language skills and memory, and this has served me well. I stumbled on this career in a very roundabout way - I was hired to do medical coding and billing (with no experience) and found I could remember all the medical terminology I learned in biology class in high school. After I left that job (due to inability to do customer service work on the phone - I can't deal with people well and could not argue politely with people about their insurance claim denials), I applied to work in a hospital doing coding. Instead they asked me if I was willing to train for transcription. I typed in the hospital for 3 years (miserably trying to put up with 5 co-workers stuffed in a tiny room), then had to relocate due to Hurricane Katrina. My former boss moonlighted typing from home and I remembered her talking about it. So I tried typing from home - and it has been wonderful!!! No people! No hassles about my grooming! No people trying to ask me questions, interrupting my train of thought. No fighting traffic! Not having to smell other people's food and listen to their background chatter....I could go on and on about all the things that drove me nuts "out there" in the workplace. Many people would find it boring to sit alone typing all day, but I love it and I thank god every day that I can do this and support myself. 90% of my job stress has disappeared, because there are none of the surprises and interruptions imposed upon me by other people that I had at every job in the past. So I would suggest and encourage that everyone with this syndrome try to develop job skills that will enable them to work from home online. It wouldn't have to necessarily be transcription, it could anything else that just required them to be in front of a computer. It is the perfect job, in my opinion, for those of us who can work if just left alone in peace. It's fuinny, but when I was doing coding, my boss told me (due to my inability to talk to customers politely) that I "didn't belong in medicine" because I "lacked compassion". Well, I'm still in medicine, and I am not required to "have compassion and emphathize" with complaining customers, and I am making a worthy contribution to the medical field. So I guess she was wrong. There are many ways to help people behind the scenes without dealing with them personally, and that's what I do.